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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28137657">tilting, steady</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/HimereCalliope/pseuds/HimereCalliope'>HimereCalliope</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Good Fight (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Drug Use, Gen, Post-Season/Series 03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:15:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,065</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28137657</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/HimereCalliope/pseuds/HimereCalliope</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Maia and Roland, a storm, and some uneven illumination.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Roland Blum &amp; Maia Rindell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Yuletide 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>tilting, steady</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/OrangeAmere/gifts">OrangeAmere</a>.</li>



    </ul></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>If there are four words to summarize the day, the week, and essentially everything about the times they are living in, they are <em>oh for fuck’s sake</em>.</p><p>They’ve been stuck in Maia’s throat for the last few months, clamped down along with a good few other choice words, because there is work to do and she has to be the professional. Roland Blum may be the attraction that draws their clients, but she’s the circus manager. She needs to keep things running.</p><p>In a weird, strange, terrible way, it’s a sign of how good their partnership is working, the fact that Roland is all but completely abandoning any pretense of caring about the actual business side of things, and leaving her to handle it however she sees fit. It’s almost a compliment. Well, that, or he’s spiraling out of control. That’s just as likely, however hard she tries to work against that. Or, of course, with Roland it could always be both.</p><p>And her job is to manage that. To keep him in line enough to not scare away their clients without antagonizing him into doing spiteful and stupid.</p><p>Not that he needs to be feeling spiteful to do something stupid. Being high serves him just fine in that regard – if that is what it is, and not just his core personality. It’s two reasons to not take her eyes off him, to not let trust creep in and give him a chance to catch her unawares.</p><p>It’s exhausting, having to prevent Roland from becoming both of their worst enemy, while at the same time trying to establish their firm in the face of his actual enemies. There are far too many people in power that Roland Blum has pissed off. Far too much danger that Roland just refuses to take seriously.</p><p>And now…</p><p>“<em>Democrats</em>”, Roland scoffs. “<em>Liberals</em>. They can barely manage to tie their shoes without Mommy’s help. And they won’t even try without Mommy’s permission.”</p><p>Maia she has also heard enough of Marissa’s stories about her father to know that sort of thinking is dangerous. She has also seen enough of her own father’s enemies, by now.</p><p> </p><p>And now–</p><p>“Oh, for fuck’s sake!”</p><p> </p><p>And now, apparently, the power’s out.</p><p>“Is this me or you?” Roland asks through the sudden darkness.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Did I mix the wrong pills or did you forget to pay the electricity bill?”</p><p>She’s tempted to let him think it’s him. But this firm can’t support more than one person acting out all their worst impulses at a time.</p><p>“It’s the <em>storm</em>,” she says shortly.</p><p>“Oh, is that what that howling is. Good, good. Come on, then.”</p><p>“Why?”</p><p>“I have candles.”</p><p>Of course he does.</p><p>She follows him into his ‘office’, still more of a bedroom-slash-opium-den, decorated even more gaudily than the last one in Chicago – her most successful effort so far to keep him content and quiet a few executive decisions she’s making about the rest of their office. He’s got candles scattered in odd places across the room, and Maia helps light the ones least likely to set anything else on fire. It makes for an uneven, shifting light, full of scattered shadows and movement in the corner of your eye, but it’s better than nothing.</p><p>“Now isn’t this cozy?” Roland smiles wide with apparently real delight.</p><p>“We need to have the power fixed,” Maia says.</p><p>Half an hour and half a dozen phone calls later, it’s become pretty clear that that’s not going to happen, at least not before morning. It’s also become increasingly clear that she won’t be getting back to her apartment any time soon. Too dangerous to drive through the storm. Too dangerous, also, probably, to leave Roland alone with his room full of candles. Someone has to be the adult in the room.</p><p>She wants to go back to her corner office, sit in her chair, and drown herself in work until her laptop battery dies.</p><p>She doesn’t.</p><p>She sits next to Roland on the floor, against the side of the ridiculous gold bed, and looks out the ridiculously large windows at the storm. It doesn’t show any signs of abating.</p><p>“Share,” she orders, when Roland goes for his stash, and shoves the lollipop he offers in her mouth without bothering to think. Why the fuck not.</p><p>“Ready to take that stick out of your ass?”</p><p>“Oh <em>fuck</em> you.”</p><p>The good thing about Roland is, he doesn’t take that personally.</p><p>“And here I thought I wasn’t your type.”</p><p>She doesn’t answer. The storm rages on, and slowly the world shifts slightly out of focus, looser around Maia.</p><p> </p><p>“What’s your problem?” Roland asks, with more contemplative consideration than intentional rudeness, a while later.</p><p><em>You are</em>, Maia means to say.</p><p>“My father’s getting out of prison,” she says.</p><p>She hadn’t meant to tell him. She had expected he would know, eventually, and that would be soon enough. Or still too soon, probably.</p><p>“Ah,” he says quietly. “Is that good or bad?” It sounds like a sincere question.</p><p>“I don’t know.”</p><p>That’s the most honest she’s been this week.</p><p>“Okay.” Roland nods, accepting of absurdities in the way only Roland Blum can be. “So tell me about him.”</p><p>She uses her father’s name for all it’s worth, all the ridiculously undeserved credit he gets for masterminding the supposed grand criminal scheme that people imagine when they look at his pile of selfishness and lies, and all cunning and connections it lets her claim she has. She hasn’t actually seen her father since… well, <em>since</em>. She doesn’t know who he is today. She’s not sure she ever knew.</p><p>She doesn’t want to talk about her father. She never wants to talk about her father.</p><p>But Roland probably knows it all already, anyway, she thinks. Why the fuck not?</p><p>So she tells him.</p><p> </p><p>Roland stares out the window for a tense moment after she’s done.</p><p>“Want him to stay in prison?”</p><p>It’s not the light tone he uses to offer first-time <em>favors</em> to people he wants in his debt. It’s… something else.</p><p>“No. Yes. I don’t know.” She breathes. “I want… I want it to not matter. I want to not care anymore.”</p><p>“I got some excellent pills for that,” Roland offers, and Maia doesn’t know whether she’s laughing or crying. She knows she’s holding onto Roland, because the world is spinning and he’s the steadiest thing around.</p><p> </p>
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